[QUOTE=Mareczku;745002]Hi Malanga, I don't have the number of abortions for those years. I could only find the number of births. I know that there were illegal abortions before abortion was legalized in some states. However, without Roe vs Wade I think the number of births would have remained high. Looking at the figures one can see the influence of Roe vs. Wade. There would still have been abortions without Roe vs Wade but not as many. Abortion is big business in America today. The abortion industry makes a lot of money and has influence. Many politicians take money from the abortion industry. I agree with what you say about educating people perhaps that is the most important.

Peace - Mareczku[/QUOTE]

Mark, can you point to sources to back up these claims? I have a good link that compiled a lot of the ACTUAL facts about the "abortion industry" to get past the propaganda.

[QUOTE=malanga;744972]... We need to convince people to stop having abortions because they are wrong. Changing the law is worthless, except as a placebo to make pro-lifers feel they did something without getting their hands dirty.[/QUOTE]

Amen!

If we're truly going to be "pro-life", then the only question that really matters is which candidate and/or party is most likely to reduce the number of abortions, regardless of their opinion on its legal status. This approach takes into account the totality of their domestic policy positions, especially on education, health care, and the economy. It may be too complex for talk radio and partisan rallies, but the standard should be results, not rhetoric.

The idea that we can legislate our way out of the abortion problem is farcical at best and dangerous at worst. Politicians and advocacy groups that focus overwhelmingly on a legal solution should give us pause. Is their agenda primarily about ending abortion, or is it more about enshrining their particular moral code into American civil law? If the latter, what else is on their agenda? My enemy's enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.

Well that was interesting propaganda by the abortion industry. I comment on the one statement about how abortion workers are afraid of being killed by pro-life extremists. Exactly how many were killed by pro-life extremists last year? This is a very rare occurrence. Almost no pro-life person supports this type of violence. The lives ended in abortion clinics are the unwanted children. We need to fight the philosophy that unborn children are the property of their mothers, who can do with them what they wish. I see abortion as violence against a mother and her child. And yes, I read that article, Planned Parenthood gets a lot of government money. It would be nice if we could live in a pro-child society but sadly we do not. In our society it seems that to many money is more important than life itself.

Brooke,
I was born, adopted and raised Catholic but in all my years I firmly believe that a president should stand for what we believe in. I jumped the gun and had an abortion - not proud but at the time......came to find out I hadn't been pregnant....but based on what happened I assumed I was. I also had a misscarriage and a healthy baby boy years later and I still say - Abortion is murder and a quick fix. I truely believe if more people would realize there wasn't a quick fix to a one night stand - they might think twice about it.
Personally, I hate Obama and have no intentions of voting for him - not trying to spark a debate but also remember I am not a Bush fan (either time around Sr or Jr) and not big on McCain. I will vote for whoever stands for what I believe in.

I am a man and I cannot imagine how a woman could be so filled with hate that she would want to terminate the life of her own child. I have never in my life felt this kind of hate. It is truly frightening to me. To have your body violated, have your child dismembered, sucked out of your body and thrown into the garbage, to me this is beyond evil. I can't imagine the torment that one would feel after going through such a nightmare. I think of the women in China who are forced to have abortions, many against their will, I think of all the young girls there that lose their lives for the crime of being female. How it must break the hearts of their mothers. Even in this country many women are forced into abortions by abusive husbands and boyfriends. Some are forced against their will into having abortions by uncaring parents. So many, maybe a majority of these women are victims too. We talk about choice but sadly many of these women didn't really have a choice.

Thank you for sharing your story Pistons. That is sad, they gave you an abortion and you weren't even pregnant. I voted for Bush twice in large part because he is pro-life. Right now I am for Obama. I am not happy with his pro-abortion record. But I feel that because of this support for the middle class that hopefully he will institute programs that will reduce the number of abortions. I could see the number of black people having abortions going down if he is elected but this is only my opinion. I see the rich getting a higher and higher percentage of the national income and more and more power at the expense of the middle class. Something needs to be done to help the middle class and not just more and more for the richest Americans. I think most rich people are pro-choice anyway as they would like to see less of us and have more for themselves.

People made the choice to have abortions, it was never forced on anyone. Put the blame where it belongs my friend. To "blame" the law is quite short-sited an inaccurate. As I stated before, illegal abortions are not included in those numbers you posted, so they cannot be used for any valid assessment. We need to convince people to stop having abortions because they are wrong. Changing the law is worthless, except as a placebo to make pro-lifers feel they did something without getting their hands dirty.[/QUOTE]

I think he has a point though. He wasn't giving you the numbers of any abortions, legal or illegal. He was given you solely the number of births and comparing that to the number of women of child bearing age. You can also take into account the change in sexual behavior that came as a result of the sexual revolution. Now granted you have the legalization of contraceptives in the 60's and the birth control pill, so that can come into play at all. But overall the birth rate in comparison to the changes of the times and cultures is probably the best statistics you're going to get on the issue, as we don't really have an accurate record of how many abortions were taking place (what was stated at Roe V Wade was later admitted to have been fabricated). So it is reasonable to believe that legalized abortion has encouraged abortion.

But even beyond this, you also need to realize that the pro choice movement has been working not only to keep clinics open, but to close crisis pregnancy centers, has been standing in the way of allowing pregnancy crisis centers to become pro life clinics where women can get prenatal care (either claiming that the clinic is just being deceptive, or that doctors cannot be anti-abortion and refuse to give a woman a referal to get an abortion). Meanwhile, the democratic party has changed its stance from "safe, legal and rare abortions" to simply "safe and legal." And then I hear ridicules things, for instance on talk radio, a man called in saying Palin would lose votes because she didn't abort her down syndrome child. I've also had people tell me that it is an issue solely on the woman's right to choose what goes on with her own body, and that therefore if a mother did not want to nurse her child and was in a situation where there was no other way to feed her child, she would have the right to starve her already born child.

Even those in advocating for gay rights understand that changing law does matter in changing people's minds and attitudes toward things. You taboo one position by doing so, thus enculturating it. It is the reason why same sex unions isn't enough even with all the rights. To be called "marriage" is to force the government and thus the culture to embrace homosexual relationships as the same and thus to label those with differing opinions as bigots.

Thus its not merely about access to abortion. Its about what that legally means when the culture enculturates people. It means the concept of "abortion rights" is taught to the culture, that it overall is encouraged to accept, that people's attitudes ought to be that its strictly a personal decision between a doctor and the woman and that whatever decision she makes is ok. That ultimately there is no wrong one and thus that its not wrong for her to have an abortion.

Both the laws and the culture needs to be changed and both affect each other.

I totally agree with what you said in the first two paragraphs, Angpuppy. You have made valid points. The comment about Sarah Palin was thought provoking. I have heard that the Emily's List group has criticized her. They are supposedly for women but not this woman. They probably wouldn't like you either. If Palin was pro-choice, had only 2 children and had aborted her Downs Syndrome son the Emily's List ladies would probably be more amenable to her. In regard to your comment about labeling those with differing opinions as bigots. It depends on what the person says. I have many times at Beliefnet seen people say that homosexuality was a sin. It is not, it is an orientation,. Some also think that gay people are intrinsically evil and disordered. Unfortunately many Catholics feel this way. To me this is prejudiced thinking. To refer to people that one dislikes as evil and disordered is hate speech to me and I'm sorry but I think that people that think this way are bigots. If the shoe fits...

I am a man and I cannot imagine how a woman could be so filled with hate that she would want to terminate the life of her own child.

Hi Mareczku,

It is my experience that most women who do get an abortion are filled with fear, not hate.

I recently moved to DC, and the poverty and the state of public schools and public health is abysmal. It is a segregated city. White folks live in the suburbs or fancy neighborhoods, black folks are left in the slums. Innocent children grow up in misery without access to health care. Many suffer of chronic toothache or other chronic diseases. A lot more children die to poor black families than white families. It is heartbreaking and yet, this gets less attention than abortion issues. I know that the official teaching of the Catholic Church is to support life from conception to death, but why conception and death always get more attention than the rest of the life?

Is that perhaps because that requires less work on our part? less taxes, less sacrifices?Republicans are "killing babies" too. It is just a bit less ' visual', but every bit as real.Regardless of where one stands on the abortion issue, I strongly recommend the book "SAVAGE INEQUALITIES". It is an eye-opener.

Will we be held held responsible for turning this sweet children into jaded cynical violent adults? How much of their guilt will we be called to share on Judgment day?

I just looked up Washington DC and found some interesting facts. These are 2004 figures. In 2004, the average teacher pay for DC teachers was $58,456., this was higher than any state, the national average was $47,750, the average for Utah was $39,965, the lowest was South Dakota at $34,040. Expenditures per pupil were $12,959, this was second only to New Jersey's $13,338, the national average was $8,310, Utah was the lowest at $4991. Pupils per teacher were 14.2, California was 21.1, Utah was 22.6, the national average was 15.8. DC's enrollment at 76,714 was lower than any state, Wyoming had 84,733 enrolled and Vermont had 98,352 enrolled. DC however had the worst high school graduation rate at 51.5%. It was worse than the worst state, South Carolina at 51.7%. Utah, with far lower teacher salaries, far lower per pupil expenditures and far larger class sizes had a graduation rate of 82.1% ranking them 5th among the states. It seems that DC's biggest problem is that most of their school students come from single parent families. The biggest help for DC schoolkids would be to encourage men to marry women when they get them pregnant. Kids from 2 parent families do a lot better in school.